What Clinton Should Have Said About Race

By John McWhorter

July 13, 2016

ON Wednesday, speaking on the same site where Abraham Lincoln delivered his “House Divided” speech just over 150 years ago, Hillary Clinton addressed race in a very modern fashion: by calling for a “conversation,” with the goal of bringing us all together. Fifty years ago the proactive approach to race was considered to be legislation; today it is considered enlightened to call for a kind of abstract discourse. The problem is that this conception of a race “conversation” has never added up to anything real.

Mrs. Clinton’s speech lacked some of the rhetorical verve of President Obama’s recent speech in Dallas, but her withering deconstruction of Donald J. Trump was one of the few times I have seen her seem to truly speak from the heart. Her contempt for the man was plain and real: “Donald Trump’s campaign adds up to an ugly, dangerous message to America. A message that you should be afraid.”

I wish there had been more of that incisiveness in her thoughts on race. We need to listen to one another, she said, “we” being, presumably, whites and blacks.

Talking isn’t nothing, and there’s a place for dialogue. It mattered that in her speech Mrs. Clinton apologized, albeit indirectly, for using the term “superpredator” a quarter-century ago.

But it was hard not to notice that her idea of a “conversation” is rather one directional: What she thinks we need to listen to is what most would consider the “black” side of things. We should listen to black families on having to counsel their boys to be extra careful in interactions with the police, to Black Lives Matter. We should listen to the police as well, she said — but notably, here Mrs. Clinton specified the five officers killed in Dallas protecting protesters, seeming to exclude cops generally.

All of this is good advice, but it leaves out quite a bit. If they were asked, many cops would say that they felt threatened, and even abused, in the dangerous neighborhoods — quite often black ones — where they are assigned. Other people would observe that white men are killed by cops as well, even though the national media rarely covers them. In general, in a real conversation on race, quite a few whites would probably complain that they were weary of being called racists, or disapprove of affirmative action, or think we exaggerate the harm of the Confederate battle flag.

To the extent that a call for a “conversation” on race omits mention of views like these, in favor of the idea that the conversation will “unite” us, it implies that these controversial views will be corrected (or silenced), that they will inevitably melt away in the face of logic or morality if only we all sit down and converse respectfully. Mrs. Clinton allowed that the conversation would be “hard,” mind you — but the thrust of her point is that America needs to take a deep breath and hear black America out.

That approach worries me because our leaders have been calling for precisely such a discussion for the past 50 years, unsuccessfully — and I am unaware of any new argumentational techniques that would change that. We need only recall Bill Clinton’s national “dialogue” on race. Did it change anything? As Mrs. Clinton herself said last year, “I don’t believe you change hearts, I believe you change laws. You change allocation of resources, you change the way systems operate.”

What, even, would the form of this conversation be? Editorials? Panels? Reports? “Hamilton”? Even the last, which Mrs. Clinton encouraged her audience to listen to, won’t prevent more Alton Sterlings, or get an ex-con back into mainstream life.

Mrs. Clinton is trying to win an election, and it isn’t the time for novelty or tilting at windmills. But she has said herself that we must change both laws and attitudes. If she is serious about dedicating her first 100 days to getting work for underserved people, then policies — not conversations — would do much more to prepare black America to take advantage of those opportunities.

What if, instead of calling for a conversation, Mrs. Clinton had called for revitalized support for vocational schooling to help get poor black people into solid jobs that don’t require a college degree? Or an end to the war on drugs, which furnishes a black market that tempts underserved black men away from legal work. Or ensuring cheap, universal access to long-acting reversible contraceptives, to help poor women (who praise these devices) control when they start families. Or phonics-based reading programs, which are proved to be the key to teaching poor kids how to read. All poor black kids should have access to them just as they get free breakfasts.

These narrow policy proposals may not have the emotional reach of a conversation, and in and of themselves they will not stop the next Philando Castile either. But they would do more for black America than any amount of formulaic dialogues, or exploring the subtle contours of whites’ inner feelings about black people. Maybe there could be compromise: Let’s have a national conversation, but make it about legislation, not feelings.

John McWhorter is an associate professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University.